Sandra Belloni — Complete eBook

“Oh! just as often and as much as you like,”
she said, and first held her hand to Arabella, next
to Cornelia, and then to Adela. She seemed to
be hesitating before the gentlemen, and when Wilfrid
raised his hat, she was put to some confusion, and
bowed rather awkwardly, and retired.

“Good night, miss!” called Mr. Pericles.

“Good night, sir!” she answered from a
little distance, and they could see that she was there
emboldened to drop a proper curtsey in accompaniment.

Then the ladies stood together and talked of her,
not with absolute enthusiasm. For, “Was
it not divine?” said Adela; and Cornelia asked
her if she meant the last piece; and, “Oh, gracious!
not that!” Adela exclaimed. And then it
was discovered how their common observation had fastened
on the boot-lace; and this vagrant article became the
key to certain speculations on her condition and character.

“Has she sentiment for what she sings? or is
it only faculty?” Cornelia put it to Mr. Sumner.

That gentleman faintly defended the stranger for the
intrusion of the bumpkin tune. “She did
it so well!” he said.

“I complain that she did it too well,”
uttered Cornelia, whose use of emphasis customarily
implied that the argument remained with her.

Talking in this manner, and leisurely marching homeward,
they were startled to hear Mr. Pericles, who had wrapped
himself impenetrably in the bear, burst from his cogitation
suddenly to cry out, in his harshest foreign accent:
“Yeaz!” And thereupon he threw open the
folds, and laid out a forefinger, and delivered himself:
“I am made my mind! I send her abroad to
ze Academie for one, two, tree year. She shall
be instructed as was not before. Zen a noise
at La Scala. No—­Paris! No—­London!
She shall astonish London fairst.—­Yez!
if I take a theatre! Yez! if I buy a newspaper!
Yez! if I pay feefty-sossand pound!”

His singular outlandish vehemence, and the sweeping
grandeur of a determination that lightly assumed the
corruptibility of our Press, sent a smile circling
among the ladies and gentlemen. The youth who
had wished to throw the fair unknown a dozen bouquets,
caught himself frowning at this brilliant prospect
for her, which was to give him his opportunity.

CHAPTER III

The next morning there were many “tra-las”
and “tum-te-turns” over the family breakfast-table;
a constant humming and crying, “I have it”;
and after two or three bars, baffled pauses and confusion
of mind. Mr. Pericles was almost abusive at the
impotent efforts of the sisters to revive in his memory
that particular delicious melody, the composition of
the fair singer herself. At last he grew so impatient
as to arrest their opening notes, and even to interrupt
their unmusical consultations, with “No:
it is no use; it is no use: no, no, I say!”